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FILM; Still Speaking After Writing 'The Ref'

By ANN HORNADAY

Published: March 27, 1994

WITHIN THE DIALOGUE-DRIVEN comedy of "The Ref," starring Denis Leary, Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey, one scene stands out for its pure visual humor. Grouped around a suburban Connecticut dining room table, seven WASP's and a cat burglar are forced by their hostess to celebrate Santa Lucia Day by donning crowns of ivy and improbably tall candles, which have been lit.

As the family's barbs become more icy, their lies less poker-faced and the hostess more drunk, the tapers begin to list perilously. It's a tableau that would seem to have been conceived by someone familiar with tense family gatherings.

Actually, Marie Weiss, who co-wrote the script with her brother-in-law Richard LaGravenese, admits to finding inspiration close to home.

"I'm a really big family person, and so is Richard," said Ms. Weiss, whose husband, Jeff, co-produced the movie with Mr. LaGravenese and Ron Bozman. "We always have these long, involved Christmas Eve dinners," she said. "You have to have seven kinds of fish, you have to have the pasta and truffles."

Mr. LaGravenese, who wrote much of the final script, said that the dinner scene was particularly exhilarating to write. "Both Marie and I are Italian Catholics who married into Jewish families, so we do have those big holiday dinners," he explained. "Families always have these unspoken dramas, and at holidays everyone is supposed to sit down and pretend that none of that is going on. Part of the fun in writing that dialogue was completely breaking down the veneer and finally having everybody say what they wanted to say."

"The Ref" involves a chronically sniping married couple, Lloyd and Caroline Chasseur (Mr. Spacey and Ms. Davis), and their extended family, whose Christmas Eve is interrupted by the burglar (Mr. Leary). Ms. Weiss, formerly an advertising copy writer, began working on "The Ref" after she and her husband moved to California from New York in 1989.

The idea came to her, she said, after a fight with her husband: "When you're in the middle of an argument and you swore that they said something and they swore they didn't say it, wouldn't it be great if there were a third party to step in and referee?"

As she wrote preliminary drafts of the script, she consulted with Mr. LaGravenese, who was nominated for an Academy Award in 1991 for his original screenplay of "The Fisher King." That year, he and Ms. Weiss brought "The Ref" to Disney.

According to the studio's production notes, the project was approved within 20 minutes. Disney asked that Mr. LaGravenese "guarantee" the screenplay: Ms. Weiss would write the first draft, and Mr. LaGravenese would come in if the studio asked him.

"The fact that we got the deal was amazing," said Mr. LaGravenese during a recent conversation at a coffee shop on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where he lives with his wife and 3-year-old daughter. "Disney usually doesn't do pitches for original ideas."

The studio usually doesn't leave original ideas alone, either; Mr. LaGravenese rewrote the script according to studio notes for a year, until the day he announced, "I'm tired of doing rewrites for executives" and put the project aside. Nine months later, Mr. Leary and Ted Demme, who directed Mr. Leary in last year's rap comedy "Who's the Man?," expressed interest, so Mr. LaGravenese stepped back in.

He collaborated closely with Mr. Demme, the actors and Ms. Weiss. In early January a new ending was shot. The old one, which had Mr. Leary's character turning himself in, was poorly received by test audiences, who wanted the burglar -- who is, after all, the film's most likable character -- to escape.

"We had the benefit of shooting in sequence," said Mr. LaGravenese. "I got to rewrite as we went along, according to what we had done, which was a real luxury." He credits all three actors with being good collaborators on the film, which was shot in and around Toronto. "Judy helped a lot with the cutting. She isn't about long speeches; she's about getting to the meat of things and avoiding sentimentality," he said.

Unlike the in-laws of "The Ref," the Weisses and LaGraveneses are, mirabile dictu, still speaking. Nevertheless, with a husband as producer and a brother-in-law as both producer and co-writer, did Ms. Weiss ever succumb to Chasseur-like whining? "It was actually very cathartic," she said of the process. "You can work things out with your characters."

For now, however, she and Mr. LaGravenese are working solo.

Mr. LaGravenese recently finished scripts for "The Little Princess," an adaptation of a Frances Hodgson Burnett story, and "Unstrung Heroes," which is to be directed by Diane Keaton.

He is completing an adaptation of "The Bridges of Madison County," the long-time best seller, for Steven Spielberg. "I read the book, which I didn't like very much," Mr. LaGravenese said. Robert, the photographer who has an affair with Francesca, an Iowa farm wife, is, he said, "a combination of Erich Segal and 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull.' This has got to be done only from her point of view. It's about a woman's inner life."

Ms. Weiss is writing a script for the producer Irwin Winkler. "But I'm still working on another spec script about domestic relations," she said. "I guess it's my theme of choice.

Photo: Richard LaGravenese, half the family writing team. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)